Leading Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Innovation and entrepreneurship are the lifeblood of any successful enterprise. In today’s complex business world the key is not finding individual creative geniuses but the creation of innovative entrepreneurial organizational cultures, and the key to this is leadership. HEC Paris, a thriving centre of innovation and entrepreneurship itself, is launching a new online executive masters' degree to develop future leaders of innovation and entrepreneurship.

The value of an executive masters’ is both tangible in terms of career growth, increased leadership capacity and in signaling a person’s readiness to step-up to another level, and intangible – leading to greater personal development, a broadening of knowledge, and the building of a network of priceless contacts.

The difficulty is time. The demographic of the typical executive masters’ is mid-30s to early 40s, senior professionals from high-performing complex organizations – a group of people who, while valuing the chance to be in a rigorous academic environment, are under enormous time-pressure in both their professional and personal lives.

HEC’s Paris’ ground-breaking On-line Executive Masters in Innovation and Entrepreneurship (MSc), run in collaboration with Coursera, solves the time problem and cleverly manages to incorporate the key elements that provide transformational lasting value into this self-paced, flexible, degree. HEC’s Dean, Peter Todd, compares the move to digital to the move up from theatre to cinema, and certainly the thinking and work behind the program has involved a pedagogical revolution as much as a technological one.

As a result, what will student participants find on this unique program? Fundamentally the teaching quality that has kept the HEC Paris Trium EMBA program in the top three of the FT’s rankings over many years has been harnessed for a digital environment, to deliver a flexible but rigorous course taught by world-class faculty and successful seasoned entrepreneurs.

The curriculum includes:

Specializations: A series of foundation courses, offered as Coursera Specializations, leading to an HEC Certificate in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship. Participants have the option to earn credit towards HEC's degree program through case studies, assignments, and a proctored exam. Course topics include creativity and innovation, entrepreneurial strategy, and scaling up your business. (These courses can be taken without applying to the full degree program).

Project-Based Courses for Degree Students: Exclusive access for admitted degree students, including interactive courses taught by HEC Paris faculty, with a team project and feedback from entrepreneurs and business leaders. Course topics include design thinking, teamwork, business planning, negotiations, and start-up financing.

The key objective of the certificate and the full degree is to provide students with the capability to transform their and their team’s ideas into business reality and enable them to lead business development, drive product innovation, or launch new business ventures.

Individuals receive a master's degree from one of the World's highest ranked business schools and the opportunity to join HEC Paris’ global Alumni network. Organizations, who sponsor students and provide them with study time, are supporting the critical development of future senior leaders who will be able to identify and develop innovative, high-potential, commercial opportunities and build the culture of innovation critical to the organization’s sustainable success.

To find out how to get started, visit the HEC Paris website where you can apply now. To learn more about the eligibility criteria and application process, visit this page or contact Elisabeth Villette (omie@hec.fr or + 33(0)1 39 67 75 37).